Lindsey Davis - Graveyard of the Hesperides

We walked back to our hired room. When we passed the Romulus, the vigiles had left. Now that it was dark, they would need to sign on for their shift, patrolling the streets to look for fires and wrongdoers-or at least householders they could fine for not keeping their fire buckets brimful.

Artemisia and Orchivia had gone from the Romulus too; we saw them talking to other men down at the Four Limpets. They were sitting with their potential clients, pretending to listen admiringly to the conversation. A lanky man in his fifties was actually serving food and drink, with Nipius and Natalis vaguely hovering indoors. In any case, I remembered that the women’s current nominal employment was supposed to be at the Brown Toad.

Their places of work seemed curiously fluid. It hardly fitted their official designation as “waitresses.” People always spoke of Rufia as routinely attached to the Hesperides. Was she an especially loyal kind of barmaid, or did Old Thales keep a tight grip on his staff? Otherwise, were Artemisia and Orchivia specifically whores and exempt from carrying trays?

While the Dardanians were with customers, I would not interrupt them to ask. I wanted my bed, with my lover Tiberius, who had already indulged in a very different kind of wooing today.

27 August

Six days before the Kalends of September (a.d. VI Kal. Sept.)

Four days before the wedding of Tiberius Manlius Faustus and Flavia Albia

Next morning, Tiberius first started his men back at their renovation at the Hesperides; later he intended going to Lesser Laurel Street. I joked that builders always keep two jobs on the go, so whenever you want them, they can say they are over at the other one.

“Oh yes, I’ll be getting drunk in a bar all day!” replied Tiberius affably. I had never seen him really drunk, though the night he went out with my father to gain approval for our future together was supposed to have had epic qualities.

“You won’t want lunch with me then.” I must have sounded disappointed. It was obvious he would have no time to come back; he had to see a painter about color shades for doors, apparently. For him, too, our not having lunch together was a matter for regret. “This had better be for the front doors, nothing less!” I grumbled.

“Our public face,” he conceded. “Vital.”

“Choose cream and dark red.”

“Yes, that’s a classic look and it’s what I’ve gone for. The base must be not too light, but warm with the sun on it, the fields and features picked out for contrast. But I have to match the cream correctly, and it must be the right red.”

Olympus. Ought I to have known him longer before tying myself to this pedant? Would his niggling drive me mad?

He could see what I thought. Wickedly, he said no more. The whole conversation might be a tease. He would always keep me on the hop; I would never be bored. Oh, I loved this man.

I myself was planning to visit the landlord, Liberalis. I wanted to challenge him about the new death count. However, before I could set off to his untidy home, he turned up of his own accord. “I heard the news. How appalling, how terrible!” The man was flapping to a degree that roused my interest. Was he merely perturbed to have other corpses found in his bar, or was there more to it?

He peered anxiously around the courtyard as if he expected it still to be an ossuary. Perhaps he wanted to frighten himself with something gruesome. He may not have known that it can be traumatic if you have to look at murder victims in a location that’s very familiar to you. It would be better not to.

Faustus, who was still here at that point, explained that the bones had been taken away last night, then he suggested, po-faced, that as owner of the premises Julius Liberalis must be responsible for paying for their funerals. From an aedile this sounded credible; Liberalis looked horrified. I knew public funds would probably be found; Tiberius would rather Liberalis kept his cash to pay the renovation account.

While the workmen started to reinstate the ground, I took Liberalis over to the Romulus for a private talk about our discoveries. The bar opposite was empty. The morning shift seemed startled to find customers, but the atmosphere was perfectly pleasant. They even brought us an olive saucer. I personally view four olives between two as miserly, but they saw it as a wildly hospitable gesture.

At this hour the Romulus was seemingly a quiet haven of refreshments. A mother could have stopped there for a drink of water with two toddlers and never realized she had chosen a place that served as a brothel at night.

“Publius Julius Liberalis!” I gave him a long thoughtful gaze. He started to speak but I carried on in a somber tone, implying that he was in trouble. “Six corpses-five males and a female-have been found buried on your premises. What do you have to say about that?”

“I know nothing about it! This has nothing to do with me!”

“Well I warn you, you may have to prove your innocence to a very senior magistrate. I’m sure you heard, the vigiles came down to view the crime scene. They went away to consult their superiors, but you know how they operate. They will look for somebody to blame, and as the owner now, you fit their suspect profile.”

Liberalis exhibited a mix of bafflement and self-defense. It can characterize the genuinely innocent-or else it’s how the guilty try to bluff. “Surely I cannot be held responsible for things that happened before I owned the bar?” That may have seemed common sense to him, but the vigiles were not renowned for logical thinking.

I smiled, acting more sympathetic. I had been to Egypt. I could shed crocodile tears. “Yes, I am so sorry they are crude. It makes life awful for the innocent. You know what they do, of course…” He had no idea. I would enjoy telling him. “They pinpoint someone they can say looks likely to have done it, then they beat him up until he confesses.”

“What if he hasn’t done it?” gasped Liberalis. “He’s not going to confess then, is he?”

“Oh he is! They use a torturer, you know.”

He had not known. He was so naive, definitely a mother’s boy. I wondered what his mother had been like. Sometimes those who mollycoddle are as dim as their offspring; other times they are needle-sharp. That can especially apply when an inheritance is looming. Mothers of unworldly only sons so often know how to get their hands on the legacy. “You are not serious!” he quavered.

“Afraid so. If someone says he is not guilty, the vigiles only take more time to make him own up. His pain lasts longer. They like that.” I smiled again, in fact I giggled. “Listen to me! I sound as if I’ve spent my life in a station house … Well, an old uncle of mine was an inquiry chief for many years. I grew up with this kind of thing. I don’t want to shock you, but it taught me a lot, Liberalis. Lucius Petronius is a lovely man in a family situation, but dear gods, I would never have wanted to meet him at work! In fact, one of the officers who came to look at your bar is his replacement, Titus Morellus. Definitely woven on the same loom. He’s Fourth Cohort, but very thick with the Third over this. It’s a multi-cohort initiative now, in view of the number of corpses and the gravity of the case.”

Oh come, Flavia Albia. That’s a fine way to describe the multi-cohort drinking bout for which the Third and Fourth found occasion yesterday. I doubted that those two would ever be back. It would not even be “case closed” because I knew neither of them even intended for a file to be opened.

Liberalis appeared to be shitting roof tiles. He fell back on pompously asserting, “I am not talking to you. I will only speak to a magistrate!”